Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 224101 (2002) [4 pages]Slow Relaxation, Confinement, and Solitons |
PRL Celebrates 50 Years
This Week's Milestone Letters are from 1984: |
L. S. Schulman1 *, E. Mihóková2, A. Scardicchio3, P. Facchi3, M. Nikl2, K. Polák2, and B. Gaveau4
1Physics Department, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York 13699-5820
2Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Cukrovarnická 10, 162 53 Prague 6, Czech Republic
3Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Bari, I-70126 Bari, Italy
4Université Paris 6, Case courrier 172, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cédex 05, France
Received 26 September 2001; published 16 May 2002
Millisecond crystal relaxation has been used to explain anomalous decay in doped alkali halides. We attribute this slowness to Fermi-Pasta-Ulam solitons. Our model exhibits confinement of mechanical energy released by excitation. Extending the model to long times is justified by its relation to solitons, excitations previously proposed to occur in alkali halides. Soliton damping and observation are also discussed.
©2002 The American Physical Society
URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/e224101
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.224101
PACS: 05.45.Yv, 31.70.Hq, 63.20.Ry, 78.55.-m
* Email address: schulman@clarkson.edu
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